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Generally speaking map is unbalanced and favors the Terrorist team. The Counter-Terrorists have only three routes to reach the hostages. The paths include the route that overlooks the missile and the basement of the silo which branches into two other passageways. Basically, the basement leads to a breakable vent and a small elevator. All these infiltration paths lead to the CTs' demise as the terrorists can simply camp above the higher ground and fire at the CTs. Adding that the hallways in the silo are confusing to remember, the darkness that hampers aiming well, and that the hostages are unable to maneuver efficiently due to the narrow halls, Zero Option was not included in later betas.

The design on Zero Option actually started before the initial release of the Counter-Strike mod. Jess Cliffe had seen John Attea's previous work on Half-Life, DM Twist, and was impressed by the map. Therefore he decided to contact John and suggested the idea of mapping for the upcoming Counter-Strike mod.[2][3] John Attea decided to accept the offer and set out to design what would become Zero Option.

The map was meant to be included in the first release of Counter-Strike, but it was delayed due to Attea being busy because of schoolwork.[2] Eventually, the map was released slightly before beta 2.0 on July 15, 1999 in a map pack that was released to give the community the opportunity to test out a few of the upcoming maps.[4] It was formally released in beta 2.0 with a slightly updated version where the player spawn points had been more spaced out to prevent telefragging.

John Attea had intended to update the map further for beta 4.0,[5] but due to the map having its last appearance in beta 3.1 this update never surfaced.

Zoption is one of a few beta maps with breakable boxes lying around. These boxes can be moved, shot or broken like in Half-Life but do not respawn after the next rounds starts.

Any player who falls into the rocket pit will be killed instantly and the console states the victim was killed with the "trigger_hurt" entity. Hostages can also be killed in this way without penalties.

If players goes to the end of the CT spawn zone and looks up near the ladder, they can see that the map has no skybox. It was probably not added as the entirety of the map takes place underground and a skybox would not be needed.

Currently, one unofficial Counter-Strike: Global Offensive remake can be found on the Steam Workshop